The Chord of Wind
by Narysse a'Jahar
Summary: After the war against Elaida, Egwene al’Vere launches another one…This time to free the sisters made damane by the Seanchan. Meanwhile Thom, Mat, and Noal travel to the Tower of Ghenjei to attempt finding Moiraine [as eluded in Knife of Dreams]........
1. Prologue The Selkie Woman

Prologue

The Selkie Woman

**A/N: Slightly edited from its original version. And if you ever get the chance to check out tarvalon. net, I highly recommend it!**

* * *

Her name, in the Old Tongue, meant "Eaglewings." Her name, in the Old Tongue, was merely Kiji.

Kiji stood high upon the tallest hill in the Seanchan village of Fylgari—it was little more than a knoll, really—watching the harbour as it bustled about, preparing for the voyage Tuon, Daughter of the Nine Moons, had ordered years ago upon all shipwrights. The fool girl believed she could just up and claim the lands across the Aryth Ocean as being hers by guardianship passed to her from Artur Hawkwing, of all people! But there were worse fools in the world, Kiji supposed. Like the women calling themselves Aes Sedai.

Her _damane_, Nula, was sitting under a large narrowleaf tree, waiting patiently for her…well, it could be called patiently, for Nula. Nula had been one of those Aes Sedai, newly leashed the past spring. Kiji wondered if the rumours brought back when Tuon had sailed across the Aryth Ocean, brought back by the waves of ships return from Falme, were true, that the new _damane_ native to that region had indeed turned against their _sul'dam_, that the Dragon Reborn had indeed appeared in the sky above Falme, battling the Dark Lord. The rumours _seemed_ to fit the Prophecies, but what of them? Were they spread merely by shipwrights too long at sea?

Kiji shook herself free of the thought and turned to Nula. "Come, Nula," she said. Like the girl was a dog. "We're going back, now."

The girl cringed, but stood up. Good; she was learning quickly.

Keeping her eyes cast down, like a good _damane_, Nula walked beside Kiji back to the kennels. Like a dog. A well-trained dog. But even a well-trained dog that had strayed to you could turn on you in an instant.

There was an old legend where Kiji had grown up, of a fisherman who had watched a seal breach onto a rocky island. The sealskin had fallen away to reveal the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her tongue was the Old Tongue, more ancient than any he'd ever heard; and she called herself Nula when he captured her sealskin. Nula lived with him for several years, bearing many children, but she discovered the sealskin; she claimed it back and went back to the ocean.

Creatures like that Nula were called Selkies by the fisherfolk, and if you could capture a Selkie, you could control it. In a way, Kiji's Nula was like a Selkie—she came from a far-off land and spoke a tongue Kiji could barely understand—and Nula's skin, her ability to channel, had been captured, like the sealskin. But Kiji knew that if Nula could ever regain that loss, and escape her leash, she would go back to her old home. Kiji hoped to prevent that, hoped to show Nula that his was her home, now, that she could never go back and that she would serve the Empress until she died. Even the tamest horse spooked sometime.

So Kiji had approached the Empress herself, telling her that, given a chance, Nula would escape. Don't let her off the leash, the Empress had told her. She will learn to be a good _damane_, and when she is a good _damane_, and grey-haired, _then_ we will take her back. By then she will have forgotten she was ever an Aes Sedai.

Yes, Kiji thought as she led Nula up the Palace staircase to the very top, where the royal _damane_ were kept, pamper her and she will forget. Reward her, and she will be good. Don't let her have her sealskin, and she will obey us, always.

* * *

Still in her lightning-panelled dress of the _sul'dam_, Kiji knelt before the Empress. "The new _damane_, Nula, is improving," she said, choosing her words carefully. "But she still remembers she was not always a _damane_."

The Empress frowned, tapping her lacquered talons on the edge of her chair. "Put her in with one of the older _damane_," she said after a time. "Then she will forget."

"Empress," Kiji said, "where I come from, we have many legends. The fisherfolk always do. But this is one everyone learns, in the islands.

"A young fisherman, Mycal, was out setting his traps when he saw a seal lumber up to a ledge on a nearby outcrop. Remembering that seals were prized for their fat and their tough hides, he quietly anchored his boat and swam to a place on the outcrop where he was hidden but could clearly see the seal.

"Something was happening to that seal. I was becoming flatter, and Mycal could see a mass of dark emerging from the head. Slowly the sealskin fell away, revealing a woman. Mycal knew at once that this was one of the legendary Selkies, a being akin to the Forsaken, but yet not nearly so. But he also knew that if you could steal a Selkie's skin, you could control her.

"He took the Selkie woman, who called herself Nula, home and married her. Mycal knew that if Nula ever found her skin, she would leave him and go back to the ocean, where she belonged. So he hid the sealskin from her, tucked up in the same spot where he hung the day's catch.

"The fisherman and his Selkie wife had many children, but he knew she would not stay with him; she was always gazing out toward the cliff where he had captured her. And one day, she found her sealskin and followed him out to the cliff in the form of a seal. He never saw her again."

Kiji paused. "So you see, the _damane_ Nula is like the Selkie Woman. If you let her escape, she will not come back."

"Put her with Gara," the Empress said, as if she had not heard a single word. "Gara is an old _damane_, and has served the Empire well for three hundred years. She will help your Nula learn she will always be a _damane_."

Was the Empress intentionally inviting disaster? For Gara had been Aes Sedai once, too.

* * *

The _damane_ called Nula sat on her miserable excuse for a bed. The _damane_ kennels were, if possible, worse than the Accepted quarters in the White Tower! Nula tugged at her braid, stubbornly. Bloody ashes, she could not forget she was Nynaeve al'Meara of the Yellow Ajah, not Nula, a good _damane_!

She could not feel Lan Mandragoran at all, not at this distance. At least he was still alive. That much she was sure of.

Nula was angry enough, she felt, to channel enough balefire to destroy the entire palace. She knew now how Egwene had felt when she was _damane_, the sense of complete helplessness accented by hatred for anyone not in a lightning-panelled dress.

Her _sul'dam_ was back, this time with a grey-haired _damane_. "Nula, I've brought you a companion," Kiji said. "Her name is Gara." She unfastened the bracelet from her wrist and hung it upon the hook that held Nula's. "Gara, you know what to expect," Kiji said before she left.

"My name is not Nula!" she cried furiously as soon as the door closed behind Kiji. Well, a few moments after the door closed behind Kiji. "It is Nynaeve al'Maera. I am an Aes Sedai of the Yellow Ajah!"

Gara simply stood there, her hands neatly folded, her eyes cast downwards. Like a good _damane_. Like a dog. Blood and bloody ashes, they were _not_ bloody dogs!

The older woman crossed over to the bed, sinking down next to Nula. "Be quiet, Aes Sedai," she said, "or they will keep you quiet. They have ways."

Nula looked at her, realising suddenly that she had an Aes Sedai's ageless look about her. Most of the other _damane_ who had been Aes Sedai had that look as well, but she'd been around enough Kinswomen and Sea Folk and Wise Ones and other _damane_ to recognise the look of those who were not Aes Sedai. "How long ago were you leashed?" she asked.

"Nearly three hundred years ago," Gara replied. "On a fishing boat far to the west of Falme. I was Zyida Albenorn then, of the Brown Ajah."

"Have you ever attempted to escape from them?"

Gara nodded. "Three times. I make a point of at least attempting every hundred years. Long enough to let them forget I try, enough so that I can wait and plan it better, enough so that the _sul'dam_ who remember are no longer alive. I plan to attempt it again, soon."

Nula knew that she could trust this woman. Bloody ashes, she _had_ to.

* * *

Darkness had fallen some time ago, but Egwene al'Vere was still awake, restlessly pacing the deck of the ship known as the _Blackbird_.

Had it been too much to allow the Seanchan to capture Nynaeve? Nynaeve had suggested it, full well knowing the risks, but also knowing that it was just one way among many that would help them claim back all the Aes Sedai who had been made _damane_ during the Seanchan invasion of Tarabon. But it seemed the easiest way.

"Mother, come to bed," her maid, Chesa, begged, appearing beside her. "You cannot do a thing for this invasion if you do not rest properly."

Egwene shook Chesa's fussing hands away. "I wish there was some way of contacting Nynaeve," she muttered, almost to herself; "but she's not a Dreamwalker. Was this plan in vain? In a hundred years, will I be known as the Amyrlin who sold Aes Sedai to the Seanchan? It's been a year, Chesa, and we aren't any closer to freeing those sisters than we were when Nynaeve suggested this fool idea!"

"You've already become well-known for your determination, Mother," Chesa fussed. "You showed that in the war against Elaida. You will show it again in this war."

"Chesa," Egwene said, staring at Fylgari Harbour, "I will come to bed shortly. I need to think."

"Do not be much later," Chesa replied, like a mother anxiously watching over her children.

Those fool Seanchan believed they could reclaim the lands that Artur Paendrag had lorded over during the Age of Legends, and had very nearly succeeded. Now Egwene was determined to weed them out. She'd already won against Elaida, hadn't she? Wasn't she the youngest Amyrlin anyone could remember, and at that one who had not even gained the shawl before being raised? She was _too_ confident, determined that because she'd already accomplished so much, events should bend for her when she was merely present at them. That had been Elaida's mistake, why she hadn't lasted as Amyrlin. Egwene was determined not to copy Elaida. But hadn't Elaida, from rumours she'd heard, been determined not to copy the mistakes the last Red sister who'd been Amyrlin had made?

Yet it wasn't so much that—well, it _was_, because Egwene was the only Amyrlin not to have been raised from the shawl—as being fair and learning from history. The weight of this invasion was squarely upon her shoulders, for even now there were songs about her, and gleemen were telling histories about her that were well out of proportion. Any leader had to deal with the gleemen, but the Amyrlin Seat most of all. She felt as though she should be staggering under the weight of all she was trying to do. Not only did she have to live up to the mere fact that she was the Amyrlin Seat, she had the whole history of the White Tower behind her. And here she was, trying to free a few hundred sisters from the Seanchan. Light, she _was_ out of her mind, if not out of her _head_.


	2. In Fylgari Harbour

Chapter 2

In Fylgari Harbour

Kiji Barrynajeh snapped the _a'dam_ bracelet onto her wrist as Nula glared at her and Gara simply looked down at the floor. A splattering of rain beat a steady tattoo upon the Palace roof. Originally, the Royal Palace had been in a city far inland, Seandar, but when the first waves of ships form the _Corenne_, the Return, had arrived home, the Empress of the Court of the Nine Moons had found it more convenient to relocate the Palace to Fylgari so she could personally pick out fresh _damane_ as they were unloaded from the ships. "There is no need to be angry, Nula," Kiji said, giving the girl what she hoped was a comforting smile. But Nula still glared.

Kiji pushed emotions through the leash back to Nula, and the _damane's_ eyes were abruptly streaming as she fought to ward off unseen blows. "You have not yet learned that a _damane_ is always calm," Kiji said, and paused. "I gave you a new name after you were leashed last spring. Nula. Do you know what that name means? It is a reminder to all _sul'dam_ and _der'sul'dam_ who were once fisherfolk that you will never be allowed off the _a'dam_. Remember this, Nula. You are like a Selkie, and I have captured your ability to channel. You will always be a _damane_; you will always be a _marath'damane_, One Who Must Be Leashed. Always." The blows continued. "I will stop when you tell me you will be a good _damane_. Although that might take the rest of the day. Aes Sedai can never lie."

* * *

Nula was breathing heavily when Kiji left, and she was still crying, though not from the painfulness of Kiji's punishment. It was because being a _damane_ was every bit as awful as Egwene had described it. And the whole time Gara had kept her eyes carefully on the floor!

"Egwene said that when she was _damane_, she spoke to another _damane_ called Pura," Nula remembered suddenly. Light, she was _not_ bloody Nula! Blood and ashes, she _had_ to remember she was Nynaeve al'Meara of the Yellow Ajah!

Gara looked up, sharply.

"Her birth name was Ryma, of the Yellow Ajah," Nula—_Nynaeve_—continued, tugging on her braid. "Egwene also said that there was another Aes Sedai _damane_ at Falme, but she didn't know her name."

"Ryma was my birth-sister," Gara said quietly. "The Empress made one of the lords wear her bracelet when the Palace was still in Seandar."

"Oh, Light," Nynaeve breathed.

* * *

Standing on the gently rocking deck of the _Blackbird_, al'Lan Mandragoran, the lost king of Malkier, stared toward the distant shore of Fylgari Harbour. His Warder's cloak was fluttering in the gentle afternoon breeze, at times camouflaging his body so that it was difficult even for him to see his own legs. But he was used to it. It was a thing you had to get used to, if you were a Warder.

Even as close as he was to Fylgari and where Egwene had said Nynaeve was being held, he still could not feel her. A thought struck him, and he actually shuddered. What if those Shadow-spawned collars blocked the Warder's bond? Egwene had said she could hardly channel at all with the _a'dam_ on unless a _sul'dam_ was wearing the bracelet.

It was raining, he noticed suddenly. He remembered the last time he and Nynaeve had been alone when it was raining…

_She laughed, dodging behind an evergreen tree dripping wet, pulling back one of the branches and letting it __spring back into place, spraying him with water. He cursed, and she laughed again. It was like hearing bells ring. Like Moiraine's laugh._

_Light, he couldn't think of Moiraine. She'd died battling the Forsaken known as Lanfear; but at the same time he wished it had been he. She'd always been so mischievous when she had been younger, freshly raised to the shawl. He could still taste the fish-water she'd managed to channel onto him, taking him by surprise, even though that had happened nearly twenty years ago._

_Nynaeve dodged him again, and he tripped on his long sword, but they were close enough that he pulled her down with him when he fell…_

A hand on his shoulder broke his reverie. "I hope she is all right," Egwene said, glancing toward Fylgari Harbour with him. "When I was _damane_, they made me feel as though I was in a pot of boiling water up to my neck. That's why we're doing this, now."

"Egwene, you can't let years-old grudges hold you down!" Lan protested, forgetting for a moment that he was speaking with the youngest Amyrlin Seat anyone could remember and seeing instead a young farmgirl in her place, barely old enough to marry. "All that matters to you is freeing those sisters in the hands of the Seanchan—"

"Do you want to know what it's like, wearing one of those _a'dam_ collars?" Egwene shot at him, so suddenly that he stopped, quiet. "You get sick if you channel when they aren't on the wrist of someone else who can. You can't even channel unless a _sul'dam_ gives you permission to do so! And the worst of it is, they can read every emotion in you if they wanted to! I wore one, once, and I vowed after that that if I was ever able to, I would free all of the unwilling _damane_ the Seanchan held! Some of the Seanchan _damane_ scream for their _sul'dams_ if you even suggest escaping, or if they are off the collar for one second! I won't let another woman be subject to that kind of life if I can help it."

"In a hundred years, Egwene al'Vere will be the name used to describe Accepted and novices of the Tower of Tar Valon who are as determined as you do be," a Domani woman, Narysse Jahar, commented, leaning on the deck railing with them. "Or it will be used against them if they do be lazy in their studies."

"But I can't let unwilling women be _damane_," Egwene whispered. "I can't."

* * *

Later, in her cabin on the _Blackbird_, as they sailed closer and closer toward Fylgari Harbour, Egwene wondered if her determination to free the Aes Sedai _damane_ was really like Lan had said. Did she really have a years-old grudge for the Seanchan?

* * *

The shipwright captaining the _Blackbird_, Cirdan, had never carried more strangely-accompanied passengers. Oh, he was used to Aes Sedai and all, having lived through the Aiel War and Elaida's War, but never had he carried more than two or three Aes Sedai at once. And now here he was in sight of Seanchan, with over a hundred Warders and more than twice that number of Aes Sedai!

It was a strange procession he'd led across the Aryth Ocean, his hackles raised the entire way.


End file.
